Gloria Romero: School districts go around roadblocks

Aug. 27, 2013

Updated Aug. 26, 2013 4:51 p.m.

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Education Secretary Arne Duncan, left, reads to preschool children in April at the Cross Cultural Family Center in San Francisco. Duncan visited the center to learn of San Francisco's Preschool for All initiative. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, left, reads to preschool children in April at the Cross Cultural Family Center in San Francisco. Duncan visited the center to learn of San Francisco's Preschool for All initiative. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

An individual can make a difference. Imagine what could happen with eight.

Rather than be stifled by Sacramento inertia on education reform, eight local school districts in California banded together, refusing to play victim to the seemingly perpetual “just say no” mantra of a state Legislature overly influenced by special-interest money and politics.

In a bold move, the districts bypassed a nonresponsive state Department of Education and the Legislature to form their own entity, the California Office to Reform Education. They then appealed directly to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who this month granted them a critical waiver from requirements of No Child Left Behind – the 2001 bipartisan law championed by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush.

The districts earned the waiver by showcasing their own plans to develop effective teacher evaluation methodologies historically resisted by California’s teachers unions.

Instantly, they became heralded as “the great eight” – with other local districts clamoring to join the reform revolution. The eight districts – disparate in geography and size – include Los Angeles Unified (the state’s largest district), Santa Ana Unified, Long Beach, San Francisco, Oakland, Sanger, Sacramento City and Fresno. Together, they represent more than 1.1 million students, or one of six students in California, an enrollment larger than those of many individual states seeking federal waivers from Secretary Duncan. Their innovation and commitment to reform by any means necessary became national news, and when they succeeded, they became the first local education agencies – rather than state agencies – to earn a waiver.

The waiver action was an unabashedly bold and innovative end run by savvy district superintendents and the broader education reform community, around the continued opposition of the teachers unions to incorporate and move forward a number of reforms, particularly teacher evaluation methodologies and the linking, in part, of teacher performance to actual student outcomes.

State leaders simply stood aside. Some claimed that Duncan's decision would “undermine” state authority, while failing to acknowledge that the same state authority has been missing in action on leadership on teacher accountability reforms.

Unaccustomed to being rendered impotent on deciding education policy, California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel protested that CTA had been “left out” of “the decision-making.” California Federation of Teachers President Joshua Pechthalt lamented that Duncan has “twice refused to grant NCLB waivers” to California. Susan Mercer, president of the Santa Ana Teachers Association, declared that “reform only happens when everyone works together to make change.”

What these union leaders didn’t say is that California’s teachers unions have wielded effective veto authority for years – either by blocking legislative proposals to implement greater teacher effectiveness methodologies or by simply refusing to sign on to funding applications – as what occurred in 2010 when over $700 million in Race to the Top funding from the Obama administration was blocked by them because they disapproved of the teacher accountability systems.

But Duncan refused to budge from the great expectation he demanded of all entities – that great teachers matter! He had the courage of his convictions and, rather than just dole out the money, he demanded that education entities – be they statewide or, for the time, in this case, local – demonstrate their commitment to teacher quality.

Led by the tenacity of eight dissidents, the system was shocked into understanding that, this time, just saying no would not suffice.

Register opinion columnist Gloria Romero is an education reformer and former Democratic state senator from Los Angeles.

Twitter: @DFER_CA

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